Today, the BMO Team changed the default bug view to the new modal view that has been in development for a while. For those who would like to use the old form, instructions on how to switch back are below in the background information. The old form will, however, be removed one day, so please try to use the new one and make suggestions on how it can be improved.

As some of you may already know, and maybe even have been using it for a while, the BMO [1] team has been working on a new bug view page (a.k.a. show_bug.cgi) for some time [2] . The older, stock bug form was not well laid out and was difficult to understand, with all of the fields visible regardless of how often they were used. The stock form was originally designed to display all of a bug’s data, and users had to adapt their workflows accordingly. The BMO team designed a completely new and more efficient view for the workflows of the majority of BMO users.

The new bug-editing form has been added to BMO alongside the stock form and can be enabled by toggling a user preference [3]. We have been incrementally improving it and collecting feedback by those brave enough to use it early on. The new form is using more modern design practices and therefore is easier for us to improve and expand on. Any new enhancements will be done only on the new form going forward. It was code named ‘Bug Modal’ due to the modular layout of the page. Each submodule can be collapsed out of view and expanded when needed.

At this time we feel that the form is feature complete and has now become the new default bug form for BMO. We have finished all the blockers in our tracking bug report [4]. The older, stock bug view form will still be around, and you can use the user preferences form to switch back to the old one [3]. In the future, we will be removing the old form completely after fixing a few more bugs [6], and we will make another announcement before doing so. Removing the old code will make it easier on us from a maintenance standpoint. Any bugs, comments, or ideas for improvement of the modal form can be reported in BMO [5].